


I Hope You Don't

by Recycling



Category: The Locked Tomb Trilogy | Gideon the Ninth Series - Tamsyn Muir
Genre: Canon-Typical Violence, F/F, First Meetings, The People's Tomb Fic Jam: First
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-10-09
Updated: 2020-10-09
Packaged: 2021-03-08 00:35:18
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,938
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26906722
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Recycling/pseuds/Recycling
Summary: The first time they meet. And the second.  And the third.
Relationships: Pyrrha Dve/Wake | Awake Remembrance of These Valiant Dead
Comments: 12
Kudos: 30





	I Hope You Don't

The first time, Pyrrha Dve came to with a start, like she had been punched in the gut. Which was almost accurate, as the body she inhabited had been shot in the gut. 

They were sprawled out in a hallway she did not recognize, back barely propped up against the wall. Ancient lights flickered and buzzed overhead. The hands of the body she piloted went to press over the stomach wounds as she felt the flesh slowly begin to mend and push the projectiles out. 

“Why won’t you just fucking _die_ already,” snarled a voice from somewhere above her. Pyrrha looked up to find a woman standing above her. She was wearing scruffy, on-world clothes that made her look like she belonged in a facman shop, if it weren’t for the bloody gashes on her body and the gun in her hand. And her face was wreathed in a halo of red that rivaled Pyrrha’s necromancer’s. 

“Who are you?” Pyrrha’s voice was raspy and broken filtered through her necromancer’s vocal box. It hurt to look at the woman, her face displayed such naked hatred that it made Pyrrha immediately want to repent of whatever sins had put that expression there. 

“Don’t think you can play with me you despicable monstrosity. You monument to death and destruction. You dead scion of a dead god.” The woman placed the barrel of her shotgun under their chin and tilted it up as she leaned down. “I charge you with crimes…” A momentary lapse in hatred played across her face as she smiled crookedly. “ _Oh._ You’re the other one, aren’t you?” 

Pyrrha willed the metal scraps to wind their way out of the tissue beneath their hands, and briefly considered reaching into the wound to pull them out herself. She needed to get them out of here before things escalated. Gideon had been taking so long to heal lately, and Pyrrha knew the consequences of that continued trend. She could see her rapier scattered off a few feet away and had no idea what had become of her spear. She was weaponless against this new threat. 

“What was it like?” The stranger voice had dropped from spiteful to dangerously soft, “What was it like being murdered for a murdering god?” 

She reached out a hand, and to Pyrrha’s complete shock, gently cradled the side of their face, leaning in until the two women’s breaths existing in the same space. “Or did you go to your death willingly? Like a lover?” Pyrrha froze at the contact, such a tender gesture had been foreign to her for so long she could not place it.

“What does it matter? What’s done is done. None who have stood against us have endured.” 

The woman sat back on her heels and laughed. A full throated, body deep laugh that held ache behind it. Pyrrha searched her memory, or their memory, for any remembrance of who this could be. She ran through those brief flashes of consciousness as she bobbed beneath the surface of control in a brain that had never really belonged to her.

“You’re Eden, aren’t you?” The woman’s stare had gone back to hateful, but with an undercurrent of interest. “Why try to kill us? You know that you can’t.” 

“Because,” she rose back to her feet, and pointed the gun at them again, “You are guilty of aiding and abetting in genocide, the destruction of the human race, and the disintegration of its institutions. Crimes for which death is the only just sentence. And I will not stop until I kill you all.” 

And she emptied the gun into their guts again.

~

The next time, Pyrrha gained consciousness with the fingers of their right hand around a throat and their left hand tangled in vicious red hair. The transition to awareness was shock enough that the fingers relaxed and Pyrrha flinched away from the body that was being held up against a wall. They were in some alley, bordered by crumbling brick buildings, lit only by the celestial bodies in the inky night sky.

The woman leaned over to cough out blood and a molar onto the ground. Both of their bodies were bloodied and cut. Pyrrha could feel at least a dozen wounds that needed to knit themselves together.  
The woman smiled up at her with bloody teeth through a crooked slash of a mouth. 

“You again.” Her voice seemed almost pleased, “Since he wouldn’t tell me, maybe you will. Why didn’t you die the last time?” 

Her voice rose to a crescendo at the end of the sentence, and her hands shot out as if she intended to claw out the eyes of the body Pyrrha shared, but she was too weak and Pyrrha easily grabbed her wrists and pinned them to the wall again. 

“You hunt us and you don’t even know what we are,” Pyrrha could hear the dryness of their voice, “Bullets cannot kill one of our kind.”

“Those bullets should have, you corpse.” The vitriol in the voice of Pyrrha’s would-be murderer should not have stung her, so she could not place the ache she felt in their gut.

Sensing hesitation, the captive spoke in a wry voice, “You should kill me, you know. I will not stop until I have killed you.” The words were so soft Pyrrha instinctively leaning closer as if to catch the words Bending her body up as much as her pinned wrist would allow, the other woman leaned in until their faces almost touched.

There was something so _ancient_ to the way looking at her made Pyrrha feel. Something so old she could not quite place where the feeling had last existed. 

Pyrrha stood their body up and backed away from the woman, who looked puzzled at the action. The stranger did not move for a moment, eyes locked between the two of them. She backed their body up further. Not surrendering a fight, just putting space where she needed it. 

The woman slowly rose to stand, lazily swiping at the blood oozing from her mouth.

“Why would you hunt us when your life is so short? We persist for myriads; you are grass in a field. Go find happiness on some planet. Find some peace.” Some small, forgotten part of Pyrrha’s soul ached to for a rest she suggested, but had never known herself.

“I will burn in hell before I forsake the justice sought by my people.” She was backing up through the alley. A few more steps and she would be entirely in shadow and out of Pyrrha’s sight. 

“You will never succeed," Pyrrha shook their head, "We are too powerful. Too ancient.”

Again, that crooked smile drove a twist into Pyrrha’s borrowed stomach. 

“You don’t know that, now do you?"

And with that, she was gone. And Pyrrha let her go.

~

The third time, it was an elbow colliding with their face. Out of pure instinct, Pyrrha snapped their head back, relaxing the arms that had been restraining a warm body against their chest. Red curls flashed as their opponent wheeled around. They were outdoors, far from any sign of civilization. A scorching hot sun beat down upon them, reflected and made harsher by the sand under their feet.

“Oh good, I was hoping I’d see you again.”

“You must know it is madness to fight us.”

“I have made no claims to sanity. Fight me.”

“No.”

“I have fought him, but I have not yet fought you. Fight me, see if you are better. You were a cursed cavalier, were you not? Are you not the warrior?”

It had been an age since Pyrrha had fought while she was herself, and never in this body had she fought without weapons. They squared off, Pyrrha raised their hands in a guarding stance.  
The other woman swung at her, attempting an uppercut, and Pyrrha dodged, missing the blow completely. The insurgent snarled and advanced, Pyrrha shot out with a cross punch that should have knocked her opponent out, but lithe movements meant it barely caught her chin, and she was _smiling_. 

“You must have been a marvel when you could fight in your own body.” And there was admiration in the voice that said those words.

Something in Pyrrha was thankful that she was conscious for the fight this time. 

Her opponent did not let up, and advanced again, going with a more conservative jab with time. Pyrrha dodged again and countering with a kick. The woman saw it coming and backed up, but not far enough. It caught the insurgent in the thigh, enough to knock her to the side but not bring her to the ground. 

It was like _dancing_ , Pyrrha felt the rented heart pounding in their chest, next to lungs that heaved with much more than the effort of the fight. This was the most alive she had felt since… well, since she had actually been alive. 

As the other woman stumbled from the blow to her leg, her arm shot out in an effort to stabilize herself. That was the opening Pyrrha needed. Grabbing the other woman’s arm, she used Gideon’s superior height and strength to pull, spin, and push the stranger until she was face down in the burning sand, arm wrenched behind her back until it was almost breaking. The woman spat and heaved as sand filled her mouth. Pyrrha used a knee that did not belong to her to press into the woman’s back and still her movements.

“Who are you?” Demanded the woman who was about to face her death.

“What does it matter?”

“I would know the name of my murderer, that I may curse it in the life to come.”

Pyrrha wrenched the arm harder and the stranger grunted from the strain on her joints. 

“Tell me your name and look into my face when you kill me. You owe me that much.”

Relaxing her hold, Pyrrha slowly let the woman turn over, still keeping her limbs restrained. 

She could not have named the emotion that shone from her opponent’s face, but it burned something in Pyrrha’s soul. 

“Go ahead and kill me,” the words were spat into the air, “Kill me, and I will be a martyr. Kill me and my name will live down in legend until we have wiped the universe clean of every last trace of your miserable heresy.”

Pyrrha could not have named the urge that took over her, but rather than strangle the life out of the mortal beneath her, she leaned down and, using borrowed lips, and kissed the stranger. She was met with a gasp, and then teeth sinking into their bottom lip. 

She jerked their head up, putting space a little between them, and started to speak, “I’m sorry, I…” But the stranger would not let her finish as she crashed her forehead into their nose. Pyrrha could both hear and feel the nasal bone _crunch_. 

That was all the distraction needed, and her opponent wrested her wrists free from Pyrrha’s hold. Simultaneously, she withdrew a leg from between their thighs and delivered a kick to the stomach that caused Pyrrha to bowl over backwards and sprawl in the sand.

Holding a hand to the ruined nose, she stared up, squinting to try and make out anything against the harsh sky.

“I won’t stop until I kill you, you know,” the insurgent said as she stood over her enemy in the sand.

“I hope you don’t.” And the asymmetrical smile the woman flashed before turning and walking away told Pyrrha that she had understood the meaning behind those words.

**Author's Note:**

> Written for the People's Tomb Discord fic jam week four, prompt: first. Can't get out of my head wondering about how these two started out, so figured I'd take a stab at fleshing out the story. Thanks for reading!


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